Thursday, July 3, 2008

Why They're Wrong, Part 6

The question has been asked whether Virginia will honor homosexual "marriages" performed elsewhere. I hope and pray that our legislature will have the common sense and decency to prevent that from happening.

Legislatures have no say in such things. Article IV of the United States Constitution makes it quite clear that the "acts and judicial proceedings" of one state have to be recognized by other states. They don't have a choice in the matter, it's required under constitutional law. "Acts and judicial proceedings" has always included marriage, that was part of the point -- you're married in one state, you're married in all states.

But no matter what judges and legislatures decide -- there will never be a "marriage" between two men or two women.

Except, of course, that there already have been such marriages and there will be more in the future.

Marriage is a beautiful concept that was created by God, not government.

Maybe, maybe not. Irrelevant. Governments have control over the recognition of marriage. Several states have begun to actually follow the U.S. Constitution, which doesn't once use the word "straight," and have begun allowing gay citizens the right to marry. The others will follow, too, they have no choice.

It joins two lives together to establish a family, and families provide the core unit where children, the next generation that will lead and protect us, are created and nurtured.

So, married couples without children aren't really married?

And this biblically defined family is the strong foundation upon which our nation was built.

Actually, not even close. Much of our history included legal polygamy and almost the entire early colonization of the East and the Westward expansion was done by men without families. In many of these places in the early days, more women were prostitutes than wives.

Strong families create strong nations, and our culture remained strong because we worked to keep the family pure. For centuries we discouraged marital infidelity, fornication and out-of-wedlock pregnancies, because those acts were harmful to the family and weakened the core of our culture.

If this is what you worked for, you failed. And, in reality, America became its strongest at the same time that infidelity, fornication and out-of-wedlock pregnancies began to expand. There's no direct connection between these things, but a rise in these things didn't slow down the expansion of the country's power in the slightest.

Once homosexual "marriages" are accepted in our courts of law, any group will be able to demand the right to marry.

This is complete nonsense. Gay marriage is implicitly protected under our laws. None of these other things are.

Polygamists, for example, are waiting patiently for the uproar over homosexuals to die down.

Then they will take their demands to court, and with homosexual "marriages" established, our courts will have no legal standing to prevent plural marriages.

Except precedent. Conservatives seem to have no understanding hour our legal system works. Most of it relies upon previous decisions, like those that explicitly banned polygamy.

We must understand that once true marriage has been redefined by activist judges and reinforced by legislatures, all restrictions on marriage must be removed. Otherwise each new group will claim unconstitutional discrimination, and a growing body of case law will support them.

We don't have to understand this at all, this isn't the way the system works. The rules are pretty clear that they only apply to two consenting adults. A judge can't change that. And certainly, the current law doesn't allow any of this to apply to non-adults or those who don't consent. New laws (not new judicial decisions) would be the only way to do that. And nothing will make that happen.

Pedophiles have been fighting around the world for children to be able to give legal sexual consent, and they are succeeding.

Now this guy is leaving the realm of sanity. Legalizing gay marriage in no way connects to legalizing pedophilia. Age of consent laws are on the books and nothing like gay marriage could possibly affect that.

Some states in the U.S. now allow 14- and 16-year-olds to give limited sexual consent and, in some cases, to marry. But if homosexual "marriages" stand, the ages will fall ever lower.

Now, Luddite is just lying. Areas where these things are happening are not because our laws are getting looser and making the age of consent lower, it's because historically these laws were looser than they are now. Historically, states had age of consent laws that were as young as 11 years of age, and 14 was widely the standard. We're moving away from that, not towards it. Gay marriage, by the way, is 100% unrelated to age of consent.

Pedophiles want all age restrictions removed, and again, if we accept homosexual unions, we will have no legal standing against any form of perversion.

Homosexuality isn't a perversion. Pedophilia is. Either way, they aren't connected by anything, legally or otherwise.

And if hate crimes continue to proliferate, we will be guilty of a felony if we object to their behavior.

Sentences like this show this person has no understanding if even basic logic. He's actually saying that if people continue to engage in hate crimes, then it automatically becomes a felony to object to hate crimes? Either that or he so doesn't understand the English language he can't even construct a valid sentence. And this letter was published.

In the early days of Christian Europe and later the United States, marriage was strictly a church function.

And history existed before that. As did marriage. As did homosexuality. As did civilization. Nothing has changed any of that. In the early days of Europe, polygamy was just fine in most places.

A man and a woman were joined together in the church, married in the sight of God, family and friends -- not government. Births, deaths, baptisms and divorces were recorded there as well, because only the church officiated over family and personal events.

Maybe, although this is certainly overstated, but in every one of those countries -- and in the U.S. -- the laws are different now, and have been for hundreds of years. Marriages are only legal if they are in some way approved of by government.

The logic Luddite uses is about to go completely off the charts here. In a quick span, he says both:

In our modern world, government has a keen interest in record keeping, and now documents all personal and family events in great detail. The church has been relegated to a symbolic role and can be left out completely, even in marriage, if couples choose a civil ceremony.

and

Yet here we are, stupidly standing by while activist judges destroy the basis of our culture, and indeed, our civilization.

So, we used to do it one way, and we've long ago abandoned that way, but abandoning that way (which we did hundreds of years ago) is going to destroy us right now? Right.

We seem completely oblivious to the fact that our constitution places the power of government in our hands.

Except when it comes to rights. We don't have control over people's rights. We, as a people, don't have the constitutional power to deny freedom of speech. We, also, don't have the right to deny the right to marry.

We hold the power to impeach judges (through our congressional representatives), and to elect those who will legislate for the good of the majority, not a perverse minority.

Right, and neither the majority of the people nor the majority of representatives favors impeaching judges who support gay marriage. So, by this guy's logic, he should respect that decision. I wonder why he isn't following his own logic? And the role of our representatives is not to legislate for the good of the majority, but to legislate for the good of us all. The majority's role is to decide which plan for achieving that good is better when we aren't sure. Their role is not -- and cannot be -- to deny rights to the minority just because they don't like that minority.

History records the stories of good people, like the Germans who watched Nazis take over their government, who have seen their nations destroyed. We still have time to stop our destruction, if we care enough to act.

And in this story, the good people are those that fight against hate mongers who twist law and history in order to deny rights to tax-paying citizens.

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